Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 46587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 233(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 233(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
So I run away, using well-practiced movements to leap from rooftop to rooftop. There’s an art to scaling a city, one of the reasons I chose to settle here.
With well-timed presses of my powerful paws, bending my legs the right way, I can vault into the air, then land in a light roll.
Other shifters often break bones when jumping like this. They don’t know the proper way to land. They miss what they’re aiming for because they’ve never drilled their jumping technique.
It’s like in the gym. Practice makes perfect.
It’s true.
I’ve been around for a long time.
But this training goes deep. Deeper than my bones. Liam made sure of that.
Finally, I have to stop as I huddle close to a wall and look across to the next rooftop. It’s a long jump, and I’d need to circle back for a runup, but it doesn’t matter anyway.
There’s a well-lit garden on the roof, human scents clashing in the air, the bright lights and music rising above their chitchat.
Even now, so far from my woman, her scent still clashes with theirs. It’s a pull, like a hook through my chest, trying to drag me back.
To where I belong. With my woman.
With a soft growl, I move to the other end of the roof, guiding my heaving body as carefully as I can.
My training worked well, even when my thoughts were brimming with her. My woman at the window, and her young scent and curvy, juicy body.
I ran straight back to my car. It sits in the alleyway where I drop down.
Liam’s voice is in my mind, seeming so much older than me when I was a kid. Always return to where you changed, unless you have a very good reason.
I slump against the wall, slowing my breathing, forcing myself to begin the transition back even as her scent tries to keep me in wolf form. I’m twisted up with conflict, almost laughing when I feel how difficult this is going to be.
Usually, I have complete mastery over it.
Nobody – woman, man, wolf, anybody – has ever touched me like this before.
I groan as my body begins to reshape, as everything returns to its proper place, and her scent lessens but doesn’t go away completely. It never could.
Naked, I run my hand through my sweaty hair, my head cocked slightly. The rooftop party sounds quieter now but still louder than it would to a regular person.
Regular.
That’s something I’ll never be.
Walking to my car, I pop the trunk. I’m glad I left the keys in the car instead of taking them on my wild run. My clothes from before lie shredded a few feet away.
I reach into the trunk and take out the bag.
Always keep a change of clothes in your trunk. You never know what’s going to happen.
It’s Liam’s voice again. I grin as I remember he told me that long before I could drive.
But as I hurriedly pull my clothes on, the smile falters.
I think of my woman, how she looked at the window, her curvaceous body crying out to be touched, to be claimed. Then, I try to imagine how she’d look if I acted on my desires, scaled her building in wolf form, and crashed through her window.
With my human brain, I can see it all clearly.
She’d scream. She’d run away.
She might even try to kill me.
CHAPTER THREE
Ruby
“Are you all right?” Mom asks, slowly buttering her bread.
She’s always a little slower in the mornings because of the sleeping pills. She moves the butter knife back and forth slowly, almost as though she’s in a trance, staring over at me with a flicker of concern in her eyes.
“I’m fine,” I tell her, trying on my best smile. “I just had a strange dream.”
I’m not sure if that’s a lie.
I did have a dream filled with teeth and claws and visions of a wolf, its eyes becoming the same silver shade as its fur in the dream when I had no way of seeing them in reality.
In the dream, they blazed. The eyes seared into me.
Silly thoughts clung to my sleeping mind as I awoke, whispering that this wolf was going to hunt me down.
Going to sneak into my bed. Going to do things I’ve never even done with a person, let alone….
And then I stopped, laughing at myself.
I was tired. I imagined a wolf for some reason. Stress made the wolf chase me in my dreams. That’s all.
But I can’t fight that feeling, that teasing at the edge of my mind. The wolf was staring at me because it, he, wanted me.
He wants to make me his. He wants to fix all my problems.
He wants to save me.
“I’m going to look for work today,” I tell Mom.
Mom gets a panicky look, her eyes shifting from side to side as if she’s looking for an escape route.